Good Cookbooks

You may be tempted to go right for the section on extreme beginners cookbooks. If so, look for ones that have good photographs illustrating the techniques.

Don’t be put off by larger cookbooks like the Better Home & Gardens Cookbook and the Betty Crocker Cookbook. They have a large number of recipes that you can slowly learn from and grow into.

Be Brave

Don’t try to be Julia Child overnight. Start simply with meal planning, and make the sides. Buy a good rotisserie chicken from your local market or Costco or wherever sells a good one for less than you could buy and cook it. As you build up your confidence,

Take your recipe and read it through completely. If you don’t understand a technique, go find a video or a website that details it.

Then gather up all the ingredients you will need, and prepare them. So if you need one onion chopped, chop it up and put it into a small bowl. Then try to line up the ingredients in the order you’ll need them. If you want a fancy name, this is called mise en place.

It’s also great for not forgetting something.

Don’t make something for someone else if you haven’t practiced cooking it already, unless you’re living with that person. Let them know an honest assessment is what you want so you can get better.

Worst case? Keep a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter around.

And don’t forget that even experienced people make mistakes. Julia Child may never have really dropped the roast chicken on the air, but she did her fair share of mistakes.